The photographer Jed Devine, who died in October at age 80, lived and worked in his Duane Street loft for 42 years. Photo courtesy of Barbara Kassel
Jed Devine, a pioneering Tribeca artist who lived on Duane Street from 1977 to 2019, died last October at the age of 80. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Devine’s work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He last exhibited with Benrubi Gallery, which will host a memorial exhibition beginning June 12. Devine's wife, Barbara Kassel, a painter, wrote this remembrance of her husband for the Trib.
By BARBARA KASSEL
Jed Devine and his first wife, Emmy Devine, a dancer, moved into a loft at 135 Duane Street in 1977, joining lots of other artists migrating to the area when Duane Street between Church and West Broadway was home to at least three shoe wholesalers and a “business machines store” that sold electric typewriters.
Eviction battles started soon after they moved in. At first, three buildings—131-5 Duane Street—fought the real estate giant Sylvan Lawrence in State Supreme Court. The residents won the right to stay in their homes under rent stabilization and, if that stopped, under the early Loft Law. Throughout their legal battles, they continued to raise their two children Siobhan and Jesse. Jed built a photographic darkroom at one end of the loft, and Emmy choreographed at the other. The kids jumped rope, roller skated, rode bikes and played ball in the sparsely furnished space. PS 234, originally located in Independence Plaza and then in the “new school” on Chambers Street, was a focus for the whole family.
Jed photographed extensively in Lower Manhattan, capturing the quiet of the Financial District on Sundays, the intricate shadows of Trinity Church, and the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges disappearing into mist.
I met Jed a few days before 9/11. Our second date included having drinks at Windows on the World, at the top of the World Trade Center. Thirty-six hours later, the Trade Towers were gone. I started to learn what was most important to Jed immediately. After the first plane hit, he took his camera to his building’s rooftop and shot film of the first tower and then, the second plane striking. He captured that second horrible explosion…..then he realized that there were people jumping. He put away his camera and came down to his loft that was now dark and left a message on the answering machine for his family that he was okay, especially worried about his daughter, Siobhan, who had just arrived at Newark Airport as the first tower was hit. He left the loft with just a change of clothes and a bag full of undeveloped 11 x 14 film from his summer in Maine. You learn a lot about a person when a calamity strikes.
I moved into his loft on Duane street in early 2002. The towers had been visible from the front of our loft. I had never lived in the city, and wondered what I would paint from the loft. I spent the next 17 years painting the view of the buildings across the street and interiors. The loft was an 80-stair walk-up, which kept us pretty fit.
We remained in the loft until 2019, during which time we fought a drawn-out eviction battle. Eventually, we and fellow tenant and visual artist Donna Dennis were the only residents left in the entire building. We accepted a buy-out and left the neighborhood, part of the wave of artists aging and migrating out of Tribeca.
When balance issues had made it impossible for Jed to use his large format cameras and be in a darkroom, he turned to digital color photography. He loved to make things. That is how he put it. He made the ordinary, extraordinary. On the back of an unopened envelope left in his studio at his death, he wrote, “For artists the most important currency is time, not money. It is not a business pursuit, it is an aesthetic quest.”